Stop promising freebies in education – Aheto-Tsegah to NPP, NDC

A former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Charles Aheto-Tsegah, says he is scared and worried the rate at which politicians are making promises in the sector of education because of elections.

According to him, it is not always the case that the political parties promising freebies would honour them after they win.

“I have actually been wondering what we are doing to ourselves as a country because this whole thing I call freelance promise of everything going free is a very great risk for us and if you are a serious political observer you will discover and anybody who wants to confirm this can just do a simple assessment with the Abossey Okai boys."

“They will tell you that when in election time the government go about making promises, the same doesn’t happen when the government is actually in power. And for me that is where I get scared with all the freebies running around. I don’t know where the money will come from and whether it will really take place.”

The government has promised free scholarships for 150,000 students entering the public universities while the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has also promised to pay the full fees of first year students.

Mr Tsegah, who was speaking on the 3FM Sunrise morning show on Wednesday, December 2 said: “Look go and take our Peoples Manifesto and look in and see whether you will find anything like ‘Fa nenyinaa’. And the other interesting is we have a certain tradition in this country and I would have expected that in trying to look for power, you look at the existing practices here. In fact, nobody in any educational system in this country except when you are in the private schools pay tuition fees.”

He also said the only thing left now in the university is academic user fee and residential facilities user fees.

“These are not monies that we cannot allow students to pay and use whatever resources we have as a country to support the quality delivery of programmes so you wonder where our are priorities are as a country. And I am not enthused with this approach because at the end of the day there wouldn’t be money for the universities to run.”